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Saturday, 24 March 2012

It is unfortunate that it falls on the day the clocks go forward, but why waste an hour catching up on sleep when you could be on a lovely run through some great countryside?

We are meeting at 9.30am at Tesco's car park in Chester le Street, it's right in the middle of the town under the railway viaduct arches.

There will be some notes to follow but we hope to keep together as much as possible.

We'll head out over the Durham dales to Allenheads, Nenthead, Alston, Hartside then dropping down to Talkin Tarn for lunch. There is a cafe, picnic tables and a nice walk, it was a bit wet underfoot a couple of weeks ago so please bring appropriate footwear.

Saturday, 10 March 2012

Everyone knows that the Air Ambulance services in the UK can give life-saving aid, by quickly getting to a casualty and evacuating them to hospital, especially in congested city centres and isolated rural places. What everybody may not know is that all UK Air Ambulances are charity run. They depend on donations from the public to keep flying, and it costs about £2500 an hour to keep a helicopter in the air.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is the sea equivalent, in that they too depend on donations to keep the Lifeboat Service going. As long ago as the 1970s, the Lifeboats were given the privilege of having their VAT paid back to them, a concession not made to all charities, so the Air Ambulances do not share in it.

This petition asks the UK Gov to return, in the form of grants to Air Ambulance Service providers, all the future VAT which the Treasury collects from them, so that the Air Ambulance Service is in practice exempt from paying VAT in the same way as the Lifeboat Service.

Good turnout at the March meeting.
3 new people from February returned and we have another owning a Stag.
The area calendars disappeared into Royal Mail so I didn't have them for the meeting.
Have them now though.

Reminder of our first run of the year.
Start at 09:30 from the Tesco car park in the centre of Chester-Le-Street

View Larger Map
The run is out west via scenic and interesting roads. Stop at Talkin Tarn for refreshments etc. Then a run back on the north side of the A69. Total mileage is around 140, but it's not compulsory to do the whole thing, drop off anytime or make your own return route. We just ask you let everyone else know you're going your own way so we don't come looking for you.
Yours
Mark